Back in April, President Biden announced
he was pulling US troops out of
Afghanistan, in line with the deal that
Trump struck last year.
Other NATO countries, like the UK, said
they'd follow. In May, troops had already
started pulling out, and by July, the
Americans abandoned Bagram air base —
their main hub for military operations.
They packed up in the middle of the
night without telling their Afghan
counterparts, who were left behind to run
the place. At that point the Taliban
accelerated their offensive. In some
places Afghan security forces put up a
fight but elsewhere they just crumbled.
And remember, these were the forces that
the US trained and equipped to the tune
of $80 billion. And they
outnumbered Taliban fighters four to one.
On August 6, the Taliban took their
first provincial capital. After that the
other capitals fell like dominoes. Places
like Kunduz, Ghazni and Lashkar Gah.
Within a week, the Taliban had taken
Afghanistan's second and third biggest
cities, Kandahar and Herat.
Then they kept moving towards the
capital.
Once they took the city of Jalalabad on
August 15,
they basically surrounded Kabul.
That evening those Taliban fighters were
inside the presidential palace.
It capped off a crazy day when things
were changing by the hour.
The US military scrambled to evacuate
staff from the American embassy.
By the afternoon, President Ashraf Ghani
had left the country.
And then there was a mad rush for
flights out.
The situation got even more chaotic the
next day. Commercial flights were
suspended and we saw desperate scenes
like this.
And then at least one man
appearing to fall to his death.
For most Afghans, leaving isn't an option.
They're stuck wondering what life will
be like under the Taliban a second time
around.
Before the US invasion in 2001, the
Taliban were in power for five years and
imposed their brutal interpretation of
Islamic law.
Music was forbidden, girls were banned
from going to school, men and women were
stoned to death for adultery.
Is this where Afghanistan is headed
again?
Well, a Taliban spokesman offered
reassurances.
He said the group is committed to a
peaceful transfer of power, that it would
offer amnesty to government officials
and that women's rights would be
respected.
But can they be
trusted?
Many Afghans are sceptical.
And that life just
got really tough.
Food prices are through the roof, people
are struggling to get hold of basic
supplies and people can't get their
money out of banks. There are also
thousands of Afghans who fled as the
Taliban swept through the country. Many
have ended up in makeshift camps in
Kabul, adding to the 400,000 Afghans who
were forced to leave their homes since
the beginning of the year.
What's going to happen to all of them?
People are still trying to make sense of
what happened, and the blame game has
ramped up, including from the White House.
The focus
is now on what the new Taliban
government will look like.
International negotiators in Doha are
trying to answer some of those questions
and salvage something from years of
peace talks. They're encouraging the
Taliban to set up a government that in
some way represents different parts of
Afghan society.
And the Taliban may be open to that as a
way to secure a semblance of
international legitimacy.
But at the same time their fighters are
in the presidential palace and
patrolling the streets — armed to the
teeth.
So it's absolutely clear who's calling
the shots.
If you want some more background check
out our recent episode, Who are the
Taliban? And subscribe to Al Jazeera
English so you don't miss our next
episodes. We've got one coming up soon,
looking at al-Qaeda and whether they're
still a threat to the world. Also, if
you've got ideas for topics you think we
should explain let us know in the
comments.